Cut Flower and Veggie Gardens – A Surprising Secret to Success
Cut Flower and Veggie Gardens – A Surprising Secret to Success
Stephanie Pratt, InstantHedge
Photographs courtesy of InstantHedge
Many of us experience a degree of envy when looking at other gardeners’ cut flower and veggie gardens. We may be having success with some crops, yet it always leaves us scratching our heads over how they manage to grow such big tomatoes, vigorous cucumbers, or dahlias completely unblemished by insects. While many of these can be chalked up to hypersensitivity about our own gardening abilities, there are tricks to growing each crop to boost success. Here is one tip that will help reduce a number of garden woes and put you on track to be the envy of every other gardener you know.
Use Hedges in Cut Flower and Vegetable Gardens
A hedge is basically a magic trick to make your cut flower or veggie garden come to life. Here are a few things you can expect:
Your garden will look straight out of a magazine. With a low hedge surrounding your garden and marking various areas, it will gain structure and beauty yearround, even when nothing is blooming.
You will have fewer pests. Boxwood hedges especially deter pests like rabbits from munching on your precious plants.
You will have better pollination and fruit set. More plants attract more beneficial insects, and lining your garden with a living border will create a habitat for good bugs.
The Best Hedges
The most popular hedge type for using in cut flower and vegetable gardens is boxwood, and Green Mountain is one of the best varieties. It is extremely low-maintenance and grows well in most of the U.S. It is evergreen and needs pruning only once per year. Using a pre-finished boxwood hedge like those available from InstantHedge make the process fast and painless.
Some Alternatives:
Box Honeysuckle (Lonicera nitida) bears an uncanny resemblance to boxwood, making it a great substitute. This is especially useful in areas prone to boxwood blight or gardens where blight has been found before. Box honeysuckle is still deer and rabbit resistant and evergreen. It does grow faster than Green Mountain boxwood, but two pruning sessions per year should be sufficient.
Hicks Yew (Taxus x media ‘Hicksii’) is a classic evergreen hedge that stays very narrow and can be kept short (around 3’ tall) or grown up for a privacy screen. Yew is not deer resistant.
Little Simon Arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis ‘Little Simon’) is great for cold regions as it is hardy to USDA Zone 3! It is a dwarf selection of Emerald Green Arborvitae and has beautiful bright green foliage year-round. Little Simon is not deer resistant.
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By Dan Heims, President, Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
Photographs courtesy of Terra Nova Nurseries, Inc.
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